Habitat not worth it in 2.2

[bunkerman]

i think habitats should be able to build research labs and commerce centers without them they are way too useless for anything other than allloy/consumer goods for non-ecumenopolis empires (personally really like agrarian idyll which also cannot build ecumenopolis) i guess they are decent for unity too but personally i usually never have a not enough unity problem most of the time i actually have a i have a shitton of unity and not much to do with it problem fairly shortly after i get to habitats. personally find it wierd that the so called commerce and research centers taht habitats should be are actually pretty useless in those 2 regards thanks to no buildings for them

 

[Kaios26]

So in my latest Game, I got trapped in the middle of the map, and for most of the game I had only 5 planets to my name. Two 12 Size, One 13 Size Gaia Planet, My Homeworld, and a 21. So I decided to play tall, since there was an abandoned Ring World two jumps over from my homeworld.

Things worked out pretty well actually. By Specializing my planets, I got a pretty good economy going, or at least enough that my neighbors thought twice about bothering me. Leveraging my Homeworld for Minerals, the Gaia Planet for Food, and turning one of the 12s into a Trade/Forge World Ecumenopolis, things where actually looking up in this barren region of space.

So of course, I'm going for the Habitats, so I can try them out in 2.2, and on paper, they seem like the perfect solution to my problems. If I cannot find any more habitable worlds in my borders, I'll build my own (with blackjack and hookers ). But I really couldn't be more wrong, since they solve none of my problems and actually wreck my empire's saving grace of its small sprawl footprint. The huge amount of research and unity from intelligent, then erudite, Technocrats gave me a fighting chance. But going hard on Habitats actually runs counter to this strength and instead of being able to put my foot on the gas, the Habitats start weighing me down, as they aren't really worth the investment for my mineral starved empire.

That really is the crux of the issue. When you are playing tall, the bottlenecks aren't research or trade, its minerals, and Habitats really do nothing to help there. Their huge expense aside, they don't help a tall empire turn that corner at all. So if Habitats are for a tall empire, I'd like them to solve a tall empire's problems, so they have a pay off that is worth the Ascension Perk. I think at least in that. game, picking anything else would have been better. And that's a shame, since the intuitive solution WAS the habitats, and its less than ideal when the intuitive solution is actually the worst option.

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

That was the old way with asteroid mining habitats. I'm not sure why habitats suddenly lost their ability to host miners when the corporations moved in. But now you can have merchants that produce trade value to buy minerals at a highly variable price. If anything, they can allow you to offload alloy/ civ factories from your worlds so you can do more mining districts and less housing districts. Sort of a reverse way to get more minerals. But I rarely have a problem where I can't max the mining districts on 4 or 5 planets that habitats would serve that purpose.

 

[westamastaflash]

I found another interesting way to use habitats. Domestic Servants and Livestock pops use very little housing, but contribute +1 to population for purposes of unlocking buildings. So you can load up your habitats with these slaves, and only have to provide the necessary jobs for the special resource producers (crystal/gas/motes) or alloy/consumer goods factories.

 

[Kahldris]

So in my latest Game, I got trapped in the middle of the map, and for most of the game I had only 5 planets to my name. Two 12 Size, One 13 Size Gaia Planet, My Homeworld, and a 21. So I decided to play tall, since there was an abandoned Ring World two jumps over from my homeworld.

Things worked out pretty well actually. By Specializing my planets, I got a pretty good economy going, or at least enough that my neighbors thought twice about bothering me. Leveraging my Homeworld for Minerals, the Gaia Planet for Food, and turning one of the 12s into a Trade/Forge World Ecumenopolis, things where actually looking up in this barren region of space.

So of course, I'm going for the Habitats, so I can try them out in 2.2, and on paper, they seem like the perfect solution to my problems. If I cannot find any more habitable worlds in my borders, I'll build my own (with blackjack and hookers ). But I really couldn't be more wrong, since they solve none of my problems and actually wreck my empire's saving grace of its small sprawl footprint. The huge amount of research and unity from intelligent, then erudite, Technocrats gave me a fighting chance. But going hard on Habitats actually runs counter to this strength and instead of being able to put my foot on the gas, the Habitats start weighing me down, as they aren't really worth the investment for my mineral starved empire.

That really is the crux of the issue. When you are playing tall, the bottlenecks aren't research or trade, its minerals, and Habitats really do nothing to help there. Their huge expense aside, they don't help a tall empire turn that corner at all. So if Habitats are for a tall empire, I'd like them to solve a tall empire's problems, so they have a pay off that is worth the Ascension Perk. I think at least in that. game, picking anything else would have been better. And that's a shame, since the intuitive solution WAS the habitats, and its less than ideal when the intuitive solution is actually the worst option.

Out of curiosity how did you build the habitats? What if you had made them really trade heavy to really buff the trade power in your little area of space? Would have probably really increased your credit income. You could have then used this to buy extra minerals. Do you think that could have worked in your game? I haven't done that yet myself. But I just started a megacorp game that I'm going to try it with.

Plus with megacorps I dont want to get too big soo habitats being small is a good thing I am thinking.

 

[Kaios26]

I built them 5 Housing / 3 Clerks. I was able to get a Matter Decompressor online, and thus I built out the Habitats with Alloy Foundries, and then Chemical Plants to help upgrade them. Building for Trade was kinda my idea, since I was relying on Trade and Buying Consumer Goods on the Market to service my pops. I didn't build really any Civilian Industries, and just pumped Alloys onto the market, with a "Militarized Economy" since they were selling at 15 credits at the time, and that's how I powered my economy into a Galaxy Beater.

Though once I took over my neighbors, the price of alloys crashed, so I guess I punched my best customers in the face .

 

[Kahldris]

I built them 5 Housing / 3 Clerks. I was able to get a Matter Decompressor online, and thus I built out the Habitats with Alloy Foundries, and then Chemical Plants to help upgrade them. Building for Trade was kinda my idea, since I was relying on Trade and Buying Consumer Goods on the Market to service my pops. I didn't build really any Civilian Industries, and just pumped Alloys onto the market, with a "Militarized Economy" since they were selling at 15 credits at the time, and that's how I powered my economy into a Galaxy Beater.

Though once I took over my neighbors, the price of alloys crashed, so I guess I punched my best customers in the face .

Lol gotta keep your customer alive! So then habitats worked out for ya then?

 

[Xshu]

Honestly, I understand that habitats are meant to do something different now, I just don't like it. The perk is literally called Voidborne, but these things hardly feel like my species is living out in the cold depths of space now. It feels like they're just fancy space stations, while the empire is still just as terrestrial as it ever was. I want them to be like tiny planets again, because I want the option to RP a civilization who doesn't need planets anymore.

Also it's making Life Seeded a pain in the ass.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hmmn turns out even 2 or 3 of them can do wonders for your force limits.

 

[westamastaflash]

Hmmn turns out even 2 or 3 of them can do wonders for your force limits.

Even one can bascially make all those +20 fleet cap techs obsolete.

 

[spyker92]

what would be good ways to buff habitats?

 

[Slynx]

I play spiritualist-authoritarian religious slaver megacorp right now.
so I have no research labs on my planets at all (no space for them, there are megaplexes and hydroponics there).

so habitats are a life savers for me. 3-3+ housing-research + all research buildings I can get and my science is not that gimped at all.
also I had a few experimental trade habitats and they are quite nice too (2-4 with resource silos). about 100+ trade power per hab

 

[01d55]

Very interesting and helpful discussion. Thank you everyone for the shared knowledge.

One thing though I would like to leave out of the discussion - or at least mention it with caveat: the ecumenopolis.
City-worlds are only accessible with ownership of a DLC (which not everybody owns ... me, for example ) and therefore shouldn’t be basis for the evaluation of habitats’ usefulness.
Of course they can be part of this; all free and purchasable content should be balanced against each other. But stating that habitats are useless because city-worlds do exist is a flawed argument imo.

The First League precursor event, which leads to an Ecumenopolis, is available without Megacorp. Probably the best precursors, since unlike Cybrex Alpha you can colonize Fen Habbanis III as soon as it is surveyed. In one game I got boxed in by neighbors & couldn't survey or expand, was behind in fleet size for a long time, but held on until I got enough pity artifacts to find Fen Hab and that Ecumenopolis put me on top of the Galaxy.

As things stand I doubt I'll ever spend an ascension slot on habs, even though I often take master builders for wonder speed (the variety of things galactic wonders can do makes it very attractive).

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

Honestly, I understand that habitats are meant to do something different now, I just don't like it. The perk is literally called Voidborne, but these things hardly feel like my species is living out in the cold depths of space now. It feels like they're just fancy space stations, while the empire is still just as terrestrial as it ever was. I want them to be like tiny planets again, because I want the option to RP a civilization who doesn't need planets anymore.

Also it's making Life Seeded a pain in the ass.

This is a good point. With how it's now trying to make them more of an accessory to any terrestial empire instead of letting them live in space, it may be best to at least change the name of the perk. It doesn't really fit with the theme of why/ how the perk was created initially.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

Spam for amenities to counteract the stability loss from overcrowding if you want all of those building slots unlocked.

Yeah, not a genuine fix, but it's a decent workaround, especially if you have some of the more amenities-producing buildings.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

From my limited experience, they seem to work great with Hive Worlds: you, basically, dig planets for all resources you can manage, while all your research and production is done by habitats; with 10 houses per district it looks pretty good.

 

[Sternenmann]

I think the main problems of habitats is that they lost their ability to produce minerals, too. The main limiting factor for tall empires is that they are limited to few mining districts, that limits their alloy production and that limits their ability to build ships, stations and megastructures. Yes, you can buy minerals on the market, but that's very inefficient and blocks your economy's growth. If you want to increase you alloy production, from a point on you simply can't keep up with buying minerals on the market, especially because manufacturing consumer goods for a growing population needs minerals, too.

Some people say that they use habitats as off-world industry hubs, where they build alloy foundries and civilian industry, but if you have enough mining districts, it's always better to build an ecumenopolis instead. Using habitats for that makes only sense if you don't have enough mining districts and mineral output to use the full potential of an ecumenopolis.

My second problem with habitats is that their special districts are simply weak and inefficient. If you had the choice of building six housing districts and the usual science and trade buildings, or building the special districts, what would you do? I would always build the six housing districts and the buildings. Yes, the districts don't cost special resources, but again, you could produce them if you had enough minerals. So habitats feel just artificially limited. You need to use their weak districts, because without enough minerals you can't keep up with manufacturing enough special resources for the stronger buildings.

So my sugestions:

- Create an asteriod miners bay building for habitats that gives two miner jobs like the planetary districts
- Make their special districts stronger by giving more jobs and some housing, like an ecumenopolis
- Move Ringworlds from galactic wonders to voidborne. Galactic wonders is far too strong, voidborne is too weak, and it would make sense to have the megastructures that give living space in one ascension perk

 

[westamastaflash]

- Create an asteriod miners bay building for habitats that gives two miner jobs like the planetary districts
- Make their special districts stronger by giving more jobs and some housing, like an ecumenopolis
- Move Ringworlds from galactic wonders to voidborne. Galactic wonders is far too strong, voidborne is too weak, and it would make sense to have the megastructures that give living space in one ascension perk

I like (mostly) what the Guilli's Planet Modifiers mod does to habitats.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=865040033
Each planet below a habitat has a chance to roll a modifier that provides 'orbital extractor' jobs - Minerals, Energy, or 'orbital researcher' jobs - Research.
These jobs are free of district limitations. I wouldn't mind seeing a decision or a building that would give you the ability to add additional extractor jobs ...

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Just the fact that the Habitat grow their own POP as any other place make them worth building as are the perfect habitability for all species. There is no one stopping you to settle new planets AND build Habitats at the same time, more or less unless you are restricted through influence.

If you avoid wars they are the only real viable way to grow more POP to fill your ring worlds and Ecumenopolies as fast as possible. They cost Alloys but the trade and Alloys they provide is more than enough to sustain themselves and then some.

They are not a drain on your economy and they practically build themselves if your economy is strong since they are one more source for growing even more POP.

The Habitat is not a replacement for planets or anything else, it is just a complement outside of a few special niche cases they are great at such as Fortifying a system from invasions etc... You can play perfectly alright using other strategies as well, but that is a good thing.

 

[Kaios26]

Lol gotta keep your customer alive! So then habitats worked out for ya then?

I'd say that the Ecumenopolis and Matter Decompressor did more, but it was useful to have two more slots of pop growth for each habitat, so my City World and Ring Worlds filled up quicker, and that really got me into a good position.

Also given how small the Habitats are, having pops that take up less space, like Robots or Slaves, seems to be a key to making them work. So if your workforce on a 5 Habitation District Habitat is 50% Organics and 50% Robots the maximum size of your Habitat isn't 65, its like 81, so if you can get lots of robo pops, they can be completely built out. And its also a good place to put your refineries, since there is less of an oppertunity cost, as Habitats have fewer pops, and fewer possible buildings.